FLORENCE AND THE MACHINE

Four years after Welch's ubiquitous and, with some onlookers, influential 2011 album Ceremonials, comes the first extract from the upcoming follow-up. As intros go, there's little change from her first salvo with Florence trilling sweetly all over the first half of the song, like some mermaid muse tempting her followers towards the inevitable - gargantuan-lunged operatics and marauding drums from the bowels of Beelzebub. Expect much fawning from all quarters of the press and endless spins of this somewhat overblown experience. Expect little more than a yawn and zero excitable reaction from me.

This review also appeared on Flipside Reviews

Paul PLEDGER
06/03/2015